Age of Exploration

Invasion by Idetka (9,315-9,334 Y)

Invasion years (9,315-9,321)

After the Great Famine of 9,312, the Pazhil Dynasty was significantly weakened. It was during this time that Prince Saeran of Idetka launched his invasion of the island. Saeran's invasion lasted 14 brutal years, during which he was aided by mercenaries and privateers from throughout the Shattered Islands and even Meó.

The invasion ended in the near-complete destruction of the Pazhil imperial line, with the exception of young Princess Rzame, who was saved from an arrow by a kiya's neck and made her escape to the island of Suvi.

Eight Years of Suffering (9,322-9,329)

During her exile on Suvi, Rzame sought to amass an invasion force capable of removing prince Saeran from power in Unuvun. She was able to do so under the promise of abdicating from the royal throne, thus ending the Pazhil Dynasty's rule over Unuvun, and allowing the Htaevic King Arbin to take the title of emperor. Ever since ascending to the throne, the ambitious Arbin had wanted to reclaim the title of emperor for the Htaevic dynasty, in hopes of one day reforming the ancient Htaevic Empire.

Thunder on the Imperial Plain (9,330-9,334)

On 9,330/0/50, Prince Saeran was assassinated by Pazhil loyalists, causing Idetkan-ruled Unuvun to fall into a chaotic period known as The Thunderstorm. Idetka quickly named a successor, General Siho Endaya, however he was killed by Pazhil loyalists mere weeks after Saeran's assassination during the Storming of the Imperial Octagon.

On 9,330/0/83, Princess Rzame returned to Unuvun accompanied by Arbin, and many Pazhil loyalists were unsatisfied with her calls for peace, as they did not believe that Arbin had the legal right to take the Unuvi throne. They split off into their own faction, the Sayammians, a reference to the ancient democratic city state of Sayamm that existed in the 9th millenium. In their New Constitution, the Sayammians demanded democratic checks and balances on Arbin's power, with some of the more radical revolutionaries calling for the eradication of the monarchy altogether.

After the routing of the Idetkans, the fighting lasted for two more years until the Sayammians finally surrendered in the Compromise of 9,334. Emperor Arbin, exhausted from war, allowed for the formation of a parliament headed by a handpicked ambassador of his choice, much like the system that already existed in the Third Htaevic Kingdom.

War of the Crab Prince (9,349-9,358 Y)

Crab Prince Incident

ZOOMING back into the feudal age, the mangled island of Unuvun was divided into a spaghetti of princedoms fighting over scarce flat land. There’s an emperor, but he acted more like the federal reserve than the president. He spent most of his time regulating the balance of power, cracking down on any princedom that gets too powerful.

One princedom that stood out from the rest was Rvàshen (ruh-var-shen). It was widely regarded as the most misfortunate of the princedoms, due to its fringe location that puts it close to the mainland supercontinent of Delezia the Unuvi try so hard to forget about. This fact led to it becoming a leading destination of pirate tourism, as well as envoys of questionable legitimacy from other empires.

One such envoy was from the rather large and terrifying Meo Empire, which was slowly feasting on the Shattered Islands to the north of Unuvun. Naturally, the Unuvi were pretty terrified of any foreign powers who are good at making boats. So they tried their best to be particularly careful with the Meó delegacy, headed by the prince to the Meó crown.

The prince of Meo had decided to embark for Unuvun in order to visit the esteemed Prince Suekasui (sway-kaw-swee) of Rvàshen. Regretfully for the prince of Meó, prince Suekasui and his male harem had all passed away mere hours before in what has gone down in Unuvi history as the ‘greatest night of all time.’ But the prince was a responsible man, and before he died he called in his entire royal court in order to name an heir. His male harem had failed to produce a child for him, understandably, and over his reign he had personally made sure there would be no relatives to contest his throne. So he did what any rational man would do, and in his drugged, dying stupor he announced the new prince of Rvàshen: Azu, his pet crab.

His entire royal court was flustered. A crab? But eventually they were convinced: with no eligible relatives, the emperor was bound to appoint an imperial family member to the Rvàshen throne. And whenever that happens, the new prince usually ends up firing half the previous royal court and beheading the other half. Nobody wanted to be in the beheaded half, and so they agreed to follow Suekasui’s will and pronounce Crab Prince Azu as the new ruler of Rvàshen.

The only problem was, while they were hastily attempting to find Azu and put him on the throne before the Meo prince walked in, one of the castle janitors had unknowingly picked up the crab and dropped him off in a bucket next to the kitchen. The royal court, flustered by the empty throne, arranged to have prince Meó sent off to dine while they figured out how to cover everything up.

Now, the cooks had also taken part in the orgy and were now seriously ill, so the royal court plucked one from the docks and prayed he wasn’t incompetent. Luckily for them, Rejìvei Sasual was indeed competent, but only at one thing: boiling crabs. And so it was rather natural for him, when he saw the huge, ornate crab in the bucket next to the stove, to dump it into a pot and turn up the heat.

It’s widely theorized that Prince Crab must’ve felt rather betrayed by the whole incident, but there was little he could do as he was steamed by an indifferent cook and served on a silver platter to the Prince of Meó. Witnesses would later confirm that it was an exquisitely delicious meal, and Rejìvei would use his notoriety to later make a killing running a global fishing and dining enterprise.

Had things gone better, the whole thing might’ve been able to be blown off as a simple mistake. But by the time the prince was in the midst of accidental regicide, an envoy had been sent off to the emperor in Zhavei on the fastest kia that the royal court could find. They had hedged all of their bets on their plan working out, going so far as to unveil the ancient Imperial Seal of Rvàshen. This was their lynchpin: because the emperor was in the midst of a little legitimacy crisis, if they presented the seal then he’d be forced to accept their appointment or risk giving the princedoms a pretext for rebellion.

It only took a few hours for the royal court to realize that the Crab Prince had gone into the Prince of Meó’s stomach. They found his little intricate armor near the stove, and realized that they hadn’t used crab in the kitchen ever since Suekasui almost choked on it several years back. Nobody wanted to be the one to explain the bad news to the Prince of Meó, and it was finally the castle janitor, secretly feeling guilty, who was forcibly volunteered. She walked up to the Prince of Meó in the royal hall and awkwardly explained to him that he had committed not only regicide, but also technical cannibalism, and that this would imply that he was just as bad as his father who had committed both regicide and cannibalism to inherit the Meo throne. She didn’t actually say the last part, but it was so ironic that even a crab could make the mental connection. The prince beheaded the castle janitor on the spot and stormed out of the castle. The rest of the royal court breathed a sigh of relief until a note from the emperor came a week later which simply stated that he would finish the job and behead the rest of them personally.

War

And so began the War of the Crab Prince. The city of Rvàshen was bombarded by the Meó prince’s fleet, and the Unuvi princedoms responded in kind with a coordinate attack on Meo holdings along the coast of the supercontinent. The pirates tried to get in on the action, but were caught between both sides and utterly annihilated for being on neither of them. They would later learn their lesson and go on to rent their services to both sides to maximize profit.

Aftermath

With a total of over 100,000 green-haired casualties in the War of the Crab Prince, the jusha class of Unuvi society was exhausted by war. Htaevic Emperor Arbin carefully tried to rein in the princedoms under a new feudal state with the declaration of the Second New Constitution, a document that gave him the power to hand-select the powerful razuku, that controlled much of Unuvun's land. Additionally, the document expressly forbid the 'appointment of crabs and all other animals into positions of power.'

Arbin's calculated risk greatly angered many of the razuku and he called in the army of his Second Htaevic Empire to Yuuvei in hopes of being able to quash revolutionary fervor. It was during this time that the Sayammians regrouped and infiltrated the Htaevic government over Unuvun in a number of key positions, including several very high ranking parliamentary roles.

Restoration of the Imperial Line

On 9,357/0/12, Htaevic officials raided parliament seat-holder Chena Tise's house under the suspicion that she was aiding the revolutionary cause. Although Sayammian arsonists set fire to the house, they were able to recover key documents that held a list of Sayammians active in the city of Racheinu Chihyu. Emperor Arbin apprehended many of these individuals and declared a public day of execution the following week. In an event known as Foiled Execution, several dozen Kiya-riding Sayammians accompanied by several hundred rogue jusha and over one thousand peasants revolted at the scene of the execution, overcoming the Htaevic troops and preventing the death of all but two prisoners.

Simultaneously, the Sayammians wrote and released a document called Declaration of a Nautical Peace that called for the installment of 23-year old Fihano Pazhil onto the throne of Unuvun in order to 'usher in a nautical peace in which the green-haired folk of this maritime island shall become naïve to the horrors of war.' Thus began the Second Thunderstorm, a year-long revolt during which almost the entirety of Unuvun rose up against Emperor Arbin. Arbin, unable to quash the rebellion, fled the island from the port of Serzilea and returned to the Shattered Islands. After Emperor Fihano rose to the throne of Unuvun, he collaborated with his Sayammian supporters to draft the Unuvunese Constitution, a document that incorporated many revolutionary ideas such as a unified measurement system, as well as many old ideas derived from the governmental system of Sayamm and other similar democracies.

Exploration of Ivinis (9,368- Y)

Main article: Exploration of Ivinis

Initial exploration and settlement

In 9,368 Y, explorer Arnppe Vzhani left the port of Rae and begun sailing westwards towards the continent of Ivinis. At the time, Ivinis had begun to become filled with various Nokhtan settlements up and down its eastern seaboard. No indigenous peoples had been found, however there had been a wealth of new animals, plants and insects discovered in the preceding century. As such, Vzhani was granted funding by the Nautical Peace to chart out the southwestern coast of Ivinis in order to find potential places that the Nautical Peace could build settlements.

In 9,375 Y, the first colony ships were sent to the island of Rvitaria. Gradually, more and more were sent until the port of Yuechua was well-established as an Unuvunese foothold in Ivinis. It would later become the hub for further expansion deeper into Ivinis.

Settlement of the Vie river basin

Discovered for the Unuvi by Flicha Fihano, the massive Vie river captured the imagination of the Unuvunese. The Nautical Peace soon began sending colonists to secure the mouth of the Vie, and rapidly begun constructing a large port at Daifihanoshai as the true extent of the river system became known. Rivalling many of the large, fertile river basins on Pangaea, the Vie watershed would become the focus of Unuvunese colonization efforts for the next several centuries. As Nokhtan colonies began to sprout up to the northeast of the Vie, the Unuvunese began work on the grand Daifihanoshai Castle, one of the largest traditional Unuvunese castles still in existence.

Discovery of Lavaank

ensnared in the forbidden fifties -- an Unuvi merchant ship on the way to Edeto is caught in a horrendous storm and sent flying past the subcontinent, coming upon a new, virgin land called Lavaank by the local Tana people.

Second Age of Exploration

the sibling crosser -- Dadu Ultraheavy Industries releases the Strawberry 5, the wildly successful commercial spaceplane that can take up to twenty people to Haki and back. With one-way tickets to Haki plumetting to $80,000, the Nautical Peace's spaceports are about to get a whole lot more crowded.